


This Could Be Heaven or This Could Be Hell

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anal Sex, Angel Dean Winchester, Angst, Biting, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Bottom Castiel, Bottom Dean, Chains, Dark Castiel, Demon Castiel, Demon Cure, Dom/sub, Face-Fucking, Handcuffs, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Master/Slave, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Role Reversal, Roleswap, Romance, Rough Sex, Top Castiel, Top Dean, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:41:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3209585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <img/></p>
<p>Cas saved Dean, again, and now Dean knows he has to kill him.  Instead he finds himself repeatedly and helplessly wrapped in Cas’s beautiful, sensual evil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Could Be Heaven or This Could Be Hell

Dean was fighting. He had been, for a hundred years or more, since he was born, and perhaps before that.

He fought as an angel and with an angel—with two, the one inside and the one before him, the one who was his brother, but not his real one. Tooth and nail and fists and grace, earthquakes and turmoil enough to tear apart the world, if they had been in the world.

There was darkness, and there was violence and torment, and there was also, still, himself. He would never be destroyed. He was utterly destroyed.

He was long past saving when he was saved.

~* * *~

Dean dangled his legs over the edge of Sears Tower, the mists of Chicago swirling around his polished shoes. It was night. Dark had come on quickly as his mind travelled twisted paths: memory, the future, the troubling tangled back ways of the divine, unfamiliar to a mind that still struggled, every day, to be human.

He remembered his second salvation. Cas had once again raised him from perdition, at devastating cost, granting a devastating gift.

If Dean had, perhaps, lost something of himself, he counted himself lucky compared to Cas, who had lost all of his. Yet Dean could not let himself believe he was gone forever, beyond redemption. There had to be a way to bring him back.

There was a soft flutter of wings, a ripple in his grace as an angel settled beside him. “Brother,” Nahbi murmured in a soft, light voice. A female vessel this time.

Dean rarely looked directly at Nahbi, not because he disliked her, but because his remaining human sensibilities found her habit of frequently changing vessels disconcerting. She did it so as not to disrupt the lives of the vessels more than necessary, for which Dean admired her. Though not nearly as much as she admired him.

Another disconcerting thing—she was not alone in this.

He nodded, acknowledging her presence. She waited for him to speak, as most angels did, when they sought his company at all. He did not often seek theirs, for they always said the same thing.

As Nahbi did now, when he finally gave in after several long minutes and asked, “What is it?”

“Brother, Heaven needs you.” 

“I serve Heaven.”

Nahbi was silent for another long moment. He knew his response was neither informative nor satisfactory to her. Finally she said, “But exactly whom? Whose commands do you obey? Because… I do not like to say it, Brother, but you should know that it’s being said that it is humans.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Dean said sharply, sounding, he thought with a pang, more like his old, human self.

Nahbi was silent again. He could hear the wheels turning in her head; feel the shape of her thoughts before she could herself. He could tell her that angels had originally been made to serve humans, that God loved humans above angels, and that therefore, Dean’s drive to find humans in need of his help, to heal them and save them, was more truly godly than anything Heaven had done in millennia. 

It was the truth. But it wasn’t his real reason.

He obeyed the drive to save people, the whispered _knowing_ that guided him to them when they needed him, but when he thought about it, he realized this was actually the one thing that had _not_ changed about him since he’d become an angel. He’d tried to express this to Sam once, when he could feel Sam’s despair at losing his _human_ brother. “I’m still in the family business, Sam,” he had joked. “It’s just a lot easier now.”

He’d regretted the words, just as he’d so often regretted things he’d said when he was human, because he knew that Sam felt redundant. Sam could spend days or weeks investigating a case, researching the right way to dispatch whatever evil thing was responsible, and Dean could just float down and smite the thing and it was all over in minutes. Dean had hoped this would make Sam pursue the life he’d wanted when he left for Stanford, that it would allow him to give up the life that had never been right for him. 

“Do you remember when we first found you, after Castiel brought you out of the cage?”

He had almost forgotten Nahbi. He glanced at her, and sighed when the grace that shone out from his eyes made her flinch. He smiled slightly at her bravery as she forced herself to meet his gaze. 

“I remember.” 

“No one recognized you. Not just who inhabited the vessel of Dean Winchester, but what you even _are._ There has never been an angel like you… Dean.”

It was a concession, and bravery, for her to say his name. It was not accepted in Heaven that he was an angel, yet still no one but Dean Winchester. It had been clear from the beginning that he was not Michael, that Michael was gone, and here was an angel none in Heaven had ever seen before. Angels called him “brother” when they called him anything at all.

Dean glanced at Nahbi again. She wanted the story. She wanted to understand. But how could he help her understand what he had never understood himself?

“I didn’t recognize myself, either,” he said, and he remembered.

~* * *~

In the Cage, all that had come before was distant, another life. He had almost forgotten how he had gotten here: his plan to resist Michael long enough to get him and Lucifer into the Cage, locking Sam and Bobby in Bobby’s panic room so they couldn’t stop him saying that fateful yes, how shocked he’d been that Lucifer had somehow convinced Adam to say yes to _him._ He could never tell whether he was fighting Lucifer or the invader inside him. He fought them both, fought them all: Lucifer, Michael, Adam, Dean Winchester. He fought to return to Sam—the only thing that burned clear through the fog of that other life. He fought merely to exist, and was defeated again and again, until suddenly he wasn’t.

He’d felt angelic hands upon him. He recognized them at once, burning him as they had when he was pulled from Alistair’s den of torture, and in the rush of impossible, disbelieving relief, terror and yes, love—he recognized it now—he had given one last mighty shove at the angels in his brain, felt the rush of air as he flew with Cas, and suddenly he was reeling in emptiness. 

Alone in his mind, and no longer in Hell.

He was not, however, alone in the place Cas had brought him. Cas was with him, kneeling silently beside where Dean lay on his back on concrete, more loops of concrete crisscrossing the free air and sky of the world above him. He wept to see it, tears spilling down his bruised and ravaged face.

He peered around. It was a highway underpass—a crossroads.

“Cas,” he rasped. He had not heard his own, true voice in decades. It almost hurt his ears.

Cas looked at him, and Dean’s heart swelled. How had he never allowed himself to realize what was between them, before he went into the Cage? He started to sit up, to reach for him, but found his body oddly unresponsive.

“You’re hurt,” Cas said. “It should heal in a few moments.” He got to his feet slowly, and carefully pulled Dean to his.

Dean struggled to get and remain upright. Cas was right—he was hurt, and the pain was returning—the savage agony of broken bones and battered, torn flesh. He would heal in a moment? “Why… can’t you just heal me?” he managed. 

Cas held him upright by the remnants of his best Fed suit jacket, clutching its ragged, blood-stained lapels. “I am healing you,” he said, and gasped, wincing and stumbling into him.

“Cas?” Dean asked, holding the angel up. He had never seen Cas injured before. He didn’t know he could be, but now that he looked at him, Cas’s coat was in burned tatters, his face bruised and covered with blood. 

Even as Dean felt Cas struggling to remain upright, he felt strength returning to his own body. A _lot_ of strength. And something else… where was all this light coming from?

“Dean,” said Cas hoarsely. “You… you will be healed. But I’m sorry. I don’t think you’ll be human. My grace…”

“No!” said Dean, appalled. That’s what this was: Cas’s grace filling him, healing every wound, even cleaning and mending his clothes… he looked down, and where his bloody knees had shown through ripped, filthy shreds of fabric a moment before, there were now smooth, neatly pressed suit pants. All pain had left him.

And gone into Cas, apparently. The angel gave a deep, wet, wracking cough as Dean clutched at him; blood spilled from his mouth.

“This… this can’t… that’s enough, Cas! I’m healed, take… take it back!” 

“I cannot. The spell… the deal I struck. It was to give up my grace to retrieve you from hell. I did not know… what I was sacrificing it to, where it would go, but now…”

“Then I’ll heal you,” said Dean. “You gave your grace to me, right? Tell me how to heal you!” He put his hand on Cas’s forehead desperately, concentrating, but nothing happened.

Cas smiled. “I do not believe the grace is all or only mine. I am sorry I do not have answers for you, Dean,” he said. “You cannot heal me. But I have no regrets. You saved us all. Thank you…” He coughed, harder this time, and the bright red blood on his lips sent a deep horror through Dean.

“Cas,” he whispered, and, unable to think of anything else to do, he kissed him. A hint of desperate sweetness swirled beneath the taste of blood.

Cas kissed him back, pressed softly and weakly against Dean before going limp in his arms. Dean lowered him to the ground.

“No,” he whispered, “no, no, no… I don’t want to be an angel, Cas, take it back—let me fix you…”

“I’ll take it from here, Squirrel,” said a loathsome, familiar voice.

Dean leapt to his feet and faced Crowley. White-hot rage filled him. “You did this to him! You made the deal! Well, fine, if he’s human and I’m an angel, I should be able to heal him—”

“You’re an angel, yes… or you will be, once the transformation is complete. But Castiel, human? Not so much.”

“He’s dying, Crowley! If he dies, so help me—”

“If you don’t want him to die, you’d better step away from him,” said Crowley calmly, walking forward. “There’s nothing as deadly to him at this moment than the juice running through you right now. I, on the other hand, have just what he needs.” He gave the kind of smug, smooth smile that had always made Dean want more than anything to beat him until he could never smile again. That smirk always meant bad, bad things.

As Dean instinctively stepped back, Crowley bent to brush his hand over Cas’s eyes, which then fluttered open.

They were black.

~* * *~

“Brother?” said Nahbi hesitantly, bringing Dean back to himself.

“Sorry,” said Dean gruffly. “Listen, Nahbi. Stop chasing me. I’m not going to lead in Heaven. I’m not made for it. I’m going to keep answering the call to help humans when they need it. If you need someone to rally behind, find someone else.”

“We have tried. No one can find Castiel since he saved you. He was our other choice.”

Dean froze. She didn’t know. The angels didn’t know.

“Don’t look for Castiel,” he said bluntly. “He can’t help you either.” 

“Why—”

“Just trust me, Nahbi. If you do see him… run. Don’t ask questions. Castiel isn’t… one of us, anymore.”

He felt her surprise, worry, and fear, and several minutes later, when neither of them found anything else to say, he felt her flutter away, off to spread the news in Heaven, no doubt.

Dean knew he would have to find a way to retrieve Cas. They needed to know what deal he had made, to try to free him from it, but only Cas himself and Crowley had that information. He had hunted Crowley, and Sam had summoned him repeatedly, to no avail. He had found a way to avoid answering the summons, and was in hiding. Because his creation had turned on him, as they always seemed to do. 

Cas was the worst sort of loose cannon—a cataclysm keeping itself on a leash for now, but if and when that leash snapped, God help the world. The only way to stop him was to kill him. Dean’s darkest secret, the one he kept from Sam, was that he never could. 

He missed Sam, even though he had a thousand brothers now. He missed the road under his tires, even though all roads were open to him: asphalt, sea, sky. He could go anywhere, and there was nowhere he wanted to go.

Snow had begun to fall. Dean looked up to watch the tiny crystals form from the fog about him. Being an angel, he had found, mainly consisted of waiting, and for what, he did not always know. Like now. He had come up to look at the city, and the lake beyond it, to think about humanity and to try to remember what it had been like to have a brother: one brother, his own and no one else’s. He thought perhaps he had been called here to speak to Nahbi, but she’d had nothing new to say, and now he saw that he had been waiting for the woman who walked below.

She would die tomorrow.

She was pale and tired-looking beneath her expensive, fastidiously-applied make up. She was tremendously pregnant and determined to pretend she was not, to work right up until the moment she gave birth and come back days after. She would get her figure back and keep her job and prevent some mediocre man with half her skill and drive from getting promoted ahead of her. She’d get an au pair—perhaps a French one—and a spot in Chicago’s best preschool. She’d keep her husband from cheating, she’d be back to wearing four-inch Manolos in no time, and everything would be the same as before, but _better._

Except that tomorrow her baby would try to come early. Even now he was twisting himself around in the womb, wrapping the umbilical cord around his neck, into the most awkward and dangerous presentation possible. His mother’s high-price, trendy birth plan would be laid to waste. 

One life would end. One would never begin. Two more souls for the veil… 

Dean floated down from the tower, careful not to make himself visible until he stood next to the woman on the sidewalk, also carefully shuttering his grace. He was not yet as good at this as most angels. The woman looked up, and still seemed a bit dazzled when she met his eye, but then Dean had sometimes gotten that response when he was human, too.

He saw her assess him quickly before he spoke. He still wore the Fed suit he’d had on when he went into the Cage. The only difference was that he looked more polished and affluent, somehow, than he ever had as a human. Angelic nature seemed to smooth out his rough edges, and he knew he looked like a young investment banker or CEO. He blended perfectly in the Chicago Loop, and this positive impression settled quickly in the woman’s eyes.

She was burdened with two large shopping bags and a laptop case, along with her big Louis Vuitton purse. “That looks like a lot to carry,” he said smoothly. “It’s getting icy out here. Let me help you to your car.” He brushed her distended belly briefly with the back of his hand as he reached for the bags.

“Oh, thank you. Oh!” said the woman, the last syllable warmly startled. Dean stood by patiently as she blinked, and froze for a bare second before seeming to come back to the present moment. Her face warmed with pleasant color, and she stood up straight, her body relaxing into easier lines as she allowed Dean to take the laptop bag as well as the shopping bags. 

Dean walked the few car lengths to her silver Mercedes sedan and handed her off the curb chivalrously.

“You’re a godsend,” she said, beaming at Dean as he placed her bags in the back seat. He couldn’t suppress an ironic smile. 

“My pleasure, miss,” he said, knowing the “miss” would please her more than a “ma’am”. “You take care, now.”

As she got in the car, Dean looked, at her and _into_ her, to see the baby settled safely, content to wait a few more days, and when he came into the world he and his mother would be able to remain in it.

He watched wisps of ground fog part around the tires of her car as she pulled into traffic on the icy street. He turned to leave—and came face to face with Cas, standing inches away.

He shrank back, holding up his hand defensively, but Cas made up the difference, stepping close again. Being a demon, and Dean’s being an angel, had made no difference to Cas’s lack of respect for personal space.

“You beat me to her,” said Cas casually. Dean flinched again as Cas reached up to brush snow from his hair. “A little flinchy, aren’t you, angel?”

Cas’s voice was thick velvet that stroked down Dean’s spine. Becoming a demon had an interesting effect on Cas. He’d become… terribly, utterly smooth. All his naiveté and awkwardness were replaced with cold seductiveness and terrifying feline grace. He was deadly, mesmerizing, utterly amoral, and, Dean knew, Sam’s Public Enemy Number One.

He should be the same thing to Dean. He _was_. Except.

Except that Dean did not step back when Cas stepped even closer to him. He did not stop Cas from running his hands, possessively, exploitatively, ruinously over his body, as though Dean were a mink coat or the supple leather upholstery of a Rolls-Royce. He did not turn his head when Cas brought his mouth brutally to his. He opened his mouth, closed his eyes, felt himself stiffen with a hot ache as Cas shoved him against the wall of the building behind him, seized his wrists and pinned them over his head.

“I thought,” Cas breathed silkily, as he seized Dean’s earlobe roughly with his teeth, “you said we had to stop meeting like this.”

Dean’s heart cracked and shrank from this Cas, even as his body received him eagerly. Cas’s cool, urbane evil was so wrong and so hopelessly irresistible. His darkness filled Dean like a drug in his veins, an ugly hum in his grace that Dean would savor painfully every moment for decades if he could.

Now that he could look back on his human life from a celestial perspective, he realized he had always been drawn to darkness, even as his job was to fight it. Now, as a being who must be considered purely good, he longed to take the darkness into himself.

And did. 

Every time Cas took him, he swore it would be the last time. Every time, he knew it was a lie.

When he had been human, he’d felt the pull toward Cas. The attraction was there, even the need, and he thought Cas felt it too. Not once had he considered acting on it. Now his angelic mind couldn’t fathom why. Perhaps the old Dean had had some attachment to women that he had not wanted to stray from.

Now, attraction was neither male nor female; it was only, always, and desperately Cas.

He didn’t know how, this time, they ended up in the ridiculously decadent Gold Coast penthouse suite, or how he ended up chained to the teak headboard, clothed only in the marks of Cas’s teeth, on his knees begging Cas not to stop riding, invading, penetrating and savaging him. He did not know why he cloaked his own power and grace, why he willingly became weak when Cas demanded it.

He should not be here. He should not allow this touch. He should be uttering allegations, damnations, castigations, instead of shouts of profane, desperate ecstasy. He should destroy Cas, instead of begging to be allowed to please him, serve him, gratify him.

Cas had released him. The shackles fell from his wrists and Dean collapsed on the bed.

He lay still, quivering with hope. Sometimes, now… if he didn’t move, if he didn’t beg for it, Cas would…

Dean barely restrained himself from moaning in bliss as Cas casually threw an arm around him and petted his head, like a dog. This touch, though it was lazy, disregarding, degrading… it was close to tenderness. As Cas’s hands wandered over his shoulders and neck, Dean quivered beneath them, forcing himself to be silent, not to beg Cas not to stop. Sometimes, there were even kisses, and Dean dared to hope, could not suppress the faintest moan when Cas settled next to him, moved his head close to his…

“You like this, don’t you, angel?” Cas murmured in a voice like rich chocolate laced with arsenic. “You always hope I’ll kiss you. Touch you sweetly, like this.” His hands were warm, and they glided over Dean’s skin like butterfly wings, like summer, and if Dean could feel the ice that lay beneath these caresses, he pretended he couldn’t. 

Dean was panting now, barely able to hold in the breathless moans, until finally one escaped, and grew louder when Cas smiled benevolently.

“You wish I’d love you, don’t you?” he said in poisonously sweet tones, cradling Dean’s face in his hands. “Answer me,” he said icily, after a short silence.

“Yes,” Dean whispered.

Cas smiled indulgently. “Maybe I even do,” he said with superbly acted tenderness. He kissed Dean’s lips softly. “Maybe your love could redeem me. Only you, Dean.”

Dean knew he shouldn’t fall for the bait, but he _was_ falling, headlong at dizzying speed. “Cas,” he whispered helplessly.

“Do you love me, Dean?” 

“Yes.”

“Good,” Cas murmured, gentle fingers threading through Dean’s hair. “Good, Dean. I will let you serve me.”

Dean’s whole body sang with pleasure and desire. Some remote corner of his mind knew he should refuse, should tell Cas that he would never serve him. Some part knew that, if he could find a way, he should kill this glittering-cold creature of ultimate evil who wore his old friend’s skin.

Except… he was cold, he was evil, he was using Dean obscenely and humiliatingly, but Dean’s heart knew that he was still Cas.

“Yes,” whispered Cas as if he’d heard Dean’s thought. “You always loved me, and do you know what’s different now? Now, I’ll let you.”

He pushed Dean off the bed, still with that strange, cool gentleness, arranging him on his knees. Cas stood before him, gazing down at him, while Dean trembled in anticipation. “Angel,” he murmured almost tenderly, “wouldn’t you like it if it could always be like this?”

He fisted Dean’s hair as he pushed into his mouth, filling it, touching the back of his throat, then pulling back. He gave a barely audible gasp of pleasure, which gave Dean a sharp thrill of satisfaction and made him redouble his efforts. He was rewarded by a slight breathlessness in Cas’s voice when he spoke. 

“I’m going to be King of Hell soon,” he said casually, digging his fingers into Dean’s scalp as he guided his movements firmly and inexorably.

Dean choked a little in surprise, but Cas sharply tugged his hair, forcing him to continue his servicing.

“And you,” Cas said smoothly, huffing sharply as he thrust harder. “They want you to take over Heaven, I hear. I wonder what they’d think if they could see you now?”

Dean was filled with icy horror at the words, but horror could not compete with his dark joy, his humiliated pleasure. He sucked willingly, let himself be guided, and as Cas neared orgasm, Dean writhed in shared ecstasy. He received Cas into himself, swallowed his essence and gave a moan of pure gratitude. “Thank you, thank you, Cas, oh, thank you,” he whispered when Cas pulled out of his mouth.

Cas smiled down at him beneficently. “You’re welcome, little angel.” He pressed Dean’s head into his pelvis, and Dean thrilled at the almost-embrace. “Perhaps,” Cas mused, stroking the back of his neck delicately, “you should start calling me ‘my king’.”

~* * *~

The alarm went off in Sam’s bedroom in the Bunker. He dragged himself out of a vague, dark dream.

He would have to drag himself out of bed, too, he knew, but it was hard. Hard to even understand why he should, now that Dean was gone, and the echoingly empty Bunker the home of his echoingly empty days.

He missed Dean like a phantom limb: he could still feel him there, next to him in the Impala or standing over his shoulder when he did research, could still hear the jokes he would make or his temper snapping like a dry twig underfoot at the moments when it would. He could call on him—pray to him, though he felt tremendously uncomfortable calling it that—if he wanted to, of course. Dean would come. Sometimes he came anyway, and Sam could tell that Dean missed him, too. He was always happy and relieved to see him.

But it made it worse in a way, because this gentle, quiet angel was not his brother. At times, he could be provoked into acting like the old Dean; at other times he would try, for Sam’s sake, and there was so much effort there that it hurt Sam to watch. He would make the inappropriate jokes or demand to be allowed to drive, but the feeling, the oh-so-human _spark_ , was gone. It only made Sam grieve that much more.

Not that it hadn’t made hunting a lot easier. Sam felt pretty useless in that department. He wondered if it were time to pursue that normal life he’d always wanted, and wondered even more why he hadn’t already done so.

Cas, of course, was one major reason. Sam closed his eyes against the pain of it. He couldn’t imagine how he could have failed Cas so completely that he became a demon.

Sam knew that if he couldn’t cure Cas of demonhood, he would have to kill him. 

It would have to be him. Dean could never do it. Dean probably thought he was keeping it a secret from Sam, but Sam had seen the signs for a long time—before Dean had fallen into the Cage. Before Dean knew it himself, probably.

Sam still hoped it wouldn’t come to killing Cas, though it was a thin hope. First he intended to capture him and attempt the cure he’d found in his research in the Men of Letters archives. But before he could do either, he had to convince himself to get up, and face one more day of this life he’d never wanted, one more day without Dean by his side, in the world where everyone he loved was dead, or lost to him just as irrevocably.

He sighed, and switched on his bedside lamp.

He gasped and groped under his mattress for his gun before he recognized the figure standing in the corner. “Jesus, Dean,” he muttered.

“Relax, Sammy,” the angel said, in a poor imitation of his brother’s lazy-belligerent manner. “Just how long does it take you to wake up these days, anyway?”

It was a weak joke. Sam didn’t bother replying. “What are you doing here, Dean?”

Dean stopped trying to imitate his old self and regarded Sam gravely. “We need to talk,” he said.

Sam sighed, rubbing his eyes and reaching for his pants. “About what?”

“About Cas.”

~* * *~

Dean had tried to lay down the law with Sam. It had gone about as well as it ever had when he was human.

“You have to let me handle this, Sam,” he’d said. “He’s so much more dangerous than anything else we’ve ever encountered.”

Sam hadn’t responded, just gave that sarcastic, disbelieving huff Dean was so familiar with, with the twisted not-smile—when had Sam gotten so terribly cynical?

He’d pressed on. “Let me contain him until we get the details figured out.” 

Dean’s legs dangled over the edge of Sears Tower again. He couldn’t have told Sam that he didn’t actually _know_ what to do, could he? About the conversation he was trying to pretend he hadn’t had with Cas, during the sex he tried to pretend never happened and would never happen and that he didn’t want…

Only one thing was clear. He must find Cas immediately, before... before what? Before Cas really did take over in hell? Before Sam cured him? Before Dean allowed himself to remember the intense pleasure, the dark joy, the offer…

No. His job was to save people. Not rule them. Not strike down people who defied him, make everyone think as he did, tell them how to act and what to do and who was boss. 

Doubt crept into him, like the fog that swirled around him was making its way through his skin. Would it have to be like that? If he ruled Heaven, was there a chance, even a small one, that he could return angels to the roles they were meant to have? A thousand higher beings doing as he’d been doing—finding those who needed them, turning them from evil toward good, healing them when called to do so.

Hell, and Cas, would fight him. But how was that different from how it had ever been? Unless he could return Cas to his rightful state. Then together, perhaps they could mend Heaven.

If the cure worked, and if he could find him. It was shocking that he could not, that so much time had passed with no sign of him. It had never been this difficult before.

Cas had tried so many times to “steal” Dean’s rescues, to make deals with them before Dean could help them, that Dean suspected Cas had a way of tracking him. Dean himself had found, when he opened himself to his longing for Cas, that he could feel Cas, too. Now, the Cas-space inside him was empty darkness and silence. He realized, slowly, that he was beginning to panic.

Oh, no. Sam.

~* * *~

Sam stared at the thing wearing the face of his old… well, he didn’t know if _friend_ was the right word, though he would have wanted that. It seemed that neither angels nor Winchesters really had friends. But Cas had been important to him, someone he’d once thought could save him, until he became someone Sam needed to save, and hadn’t.

He was so tired of failing to save anyone.

“Stop fighting,” he said quietly. He tried to ignore Cas’s agonized panting. “I’m trying to help you, Cas. You don’t want to be this thing anymore…

“You’ll kill me, Sam.”

He sounded so much like his old self—monotone, awkward, the cold demon smoothness growing less with each injection—that Sam hesitated. He tried to rally, knowing it would be better to get this done before Dean showed up. He staggered a little as he walked across the room to prepare the next injection. He’d been badly hurt in capturing Cas. He couldn’t believe he’d accomplished it without Dean finding him. He smiled a little. At least he still knew his brother well enough to fool him, but not for long, he was sure.

“Better dead than—”

“Sam, you can’t return me to human. I was never human, and Jimmy Novak is long gone. If you cure me, the demon will be gone, the human is gone, and the angel is long gone. I will be nothing.” 

The last injection had changed him further. Real emotion was creeping into his voice. Sam forced himself to ignore it, to see the demon, the most dangerous he’d ever known. 

He lifted the needle. His hand shook. “I’m sorry, Cas.” He couldn’t stop the apology. “But again, better nothing than—”

“No.” A hand closed over his, stopping the motion of the needle, but Sam yanked free, elbowed Dean as hard as he could, and stabbed the needle into Cas’s neck. Cas shrieked, piercing Sam with fear and regret. But he was almost there. Sam could feel it—Cas was changing, they could save him…

“Sam, just wait,” said Dean. He hadn’t moved when Sam elbowed him, and now he took the syringe from Sam’s hand. Sam dodged him, leaping for the tray of implements where another syringe waited.

“Dean,” Cas moaned, and both brothers froze at the sound of his voice.

~* * *~

As one, they turned toward him.

“Dean, don’t. Please don’t,” Cas whispered.

It really did look like the “cure” was killing him. He was sweating, grayish, and haggard, his voice cracked and painful. 

Dean couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized Sam would find a way around him, would manage to hide his plan to find and capture Cas and implement the cure before Dean could stop him. Of course Sam would know he was wavering. Sam always knew. 

He moved toward Cas, but Sam moved to stop him. “Dean. Damn it. Don’t let him fool you.” He raised the new syringe in his hand. “Let me finish this. It’s working, Dean. Just stand back…”

Sam crumpled to the floor when Dean touched his forehead. Dean lowered him gently, regret stabbing him. He had never used his angelic power on Sam, and didn’t know if his brother would forgive him for doing it now. 

“Sorry, Sam,” he murmured.

He went to Cas, knelt by his chair, and took his shackled hand. 

“Dean, please. I wanted to save you,” Cas whispered.

“You did. You brought me out of hell—twice. You saved me, Cas.” He caressed Cas’s hand, but he was still plagued with doubt. It was so good to see the Cas he had known.

Perhaps he should have let Sam complete the cure, even if it killed Cas. Maybe death would be a better fate than a return to evil. Maybe Cas really _was_ manipulating him even now, hiding his evil, biding his time.

Maybe this was a test from… God, or whatever whispered to him and guided him at times, and he would have to complete the cure himself. He could not imagine what else he was hoping for. 

“I love you,” Cas said, and Dean’s heart shattered. He was lost. “I couldn’t say it… before. But I loved you as an angel, I loved you as a demon, and I love you now. I… I know I used you abominably, Dean, but I couldn’t stay away from you…”

“I couldn’t stay away from you, either,” Dean whispered, leaning close and brushing a kiss over Cas’s battered mouth. “We’re even.”

“Please… don’t inject me again. I can save you. I did it—everything—for you. For you, and for Heaven, and humanity. I wanted… peace.”

“You wanted to be King of Hell for _peace_?”

“Yes. And you ruler of Heaven. We can maintain balance. Any great evil I try to commit, you’ll be there to stop me. I took Crowley out of the picture, Dean. I succeeded; I’m King of Hell. They’ll obey me. And they’ll obey you. And we can…”

He faltered. “Oh, Dean. I wish… just once, I wish I could be with you without that darkness inside me, but it will return. If you wish never to see it again, you must finish what Sam started. You must kill me. I was… I am evil, Dean, but I still love you, and I still wish for peace…”

Dean was gazing down at him, so fraught with love that he could hardly speak. “Once, you say? I think we might be able to manage once.”

~* * *~

Dean laid Cas on the plush bed beneath the familiar teak headboard and kissed him deeply. He was burning with lust beyond anything he had ever felt as a human, or since. If he thought had he desired the icily beautiful demonic Cas, it was a palmful of water trickling away compared to the ocean of passion that rose up now to drown him, passion for this shadow of the angel he had first met. The devastating face brought memories of divine salvation, hands burning him in a place where everything burned, but nothing so shocking, so decimating as the flames of love.

He tore at Cas’s clothes, frantic to reach his skin. He hissed in frustration when he realized Cas was still handcuffed with the demon cuffs; he reached for them, intending to disintegrate them, but Cas grabbed his wrist.

“You could… use them on me,” Cas murmured diffidently. He was shy, and didn’t look into Dean’s eyes, and Dean was wrecked by another wave of lust as he continued, “Like I did on you all those times.”

Dean shook with aching need and indecision. Cas was vulnerable, he was hurt—Dean shouldn’t use him that way now, shouldn’t take advantage. He fought silently with himself until Cas whispered, “Please, Dean… I want it…”

Dean crumpled, gasping for breath, and the cuffs sprang open and into his hand. He wordlessly turned Cas over on his belly and cuffed him to the headboard, the same headboard he had been chained to himself only days before, and the memory inflamed him further, snapping his control. He gave a cry of lust and pushed Cas’s knees apart, mounting him and thrusting hard. Cas’s high, desperate wail rippled through Dean’s grace. Dean came almost instantly, but not being human, had no need to stop. He shoved into Cas, holding him down by his neck on the bed, riding him as Cas bucked frantically. Dean bit Cas’s shoulder several times, hard, and Cas squealed in pained pleasure, as he himself had so many times. 

He turned Cas’s head so he could kiss him. Never before had Cas let him kiss him as much as he wanted; so Dean ravaged him with kisses, his tongue, lips and teeth searching and plundering Cas’s mouth over and over.

He flung the cuffs off and pulled Cas into his arms, still kissing him, needing to be held and kissed in return, and Cas obliged him, holding Dean tighter as his strength returned. And under the sweetness of the kisses, Dean could feel Cas’s evil returning. He fought it, loving Cas harder, as hard as he could, desperate to keep him with him. 

Cas tried to stay. Dean heard him whimper under his breath, “No, no, not yet, please…”

“It’s all right, Cas,” Dean whispered. “It’s all right. I’ll still love you. I’ll always love you.” He cradled Cas close, still inside him, Cas’s legs wrapped around his waist. Dean could swear that even Cas’s body was becoming colder, even as he tried to infuse its warmth into his very being.

“Tell me you love me… one more time,” Dean whispered.

Cas stroked Dean’s hair slowly, and cold rippled down Dean’s spine from his fingertips. “I love you… little angel,” he said.

~* * *~

Dean thought he might have years, even decades of work ahead of him, but in the end, taking over Heaven was easier than half of the cases he and Sam had worked when he was human. In a matter of weeks, it felt like he had always ruled.

The other angels welcomed him. It seemed his very indifference to them, his insistence on doing what he felt was right while ignoring their opinions, had already made them think he was their natural leader. There were a few pockets of resistance, but they were quashed by the time Dean even knew of them. There was a rumor that he had been especially created by God to reform Heaven, sent to prepare it for God’s return.

Dean himself could not be sure that rumor was entirely unfounded.

He walked into the Bunker for the first time since Sam had tried to cure Cas of demonhood there. He hesitated over the threshold. What if Sam had angel-proofed it against him? They’d talked since that day, but as Dean had predicted, Sam had been furious at him for knocking him out and forcing his decision about Cas on him. Dean thought he’d convinced him this way was best, but you never knew with Sam. Having a brother who ruled Heaven couldn’t be easy on him, either.

Finally Dean went in, relieved when he wasn’t thrown back from crossing the threshold. Sam was there, in the main library area.

“Hey.” Sam greeted him casually, looking up at Dean over a pile of books he was stacking. 

Just like that, Dean knew he was forgiven. He felt, suddenly, more human than he had felt for years before the Cage. It was as if he and Sam had never even hunted monsters or learned the name of a single angel, or demon, like Dean was just a guy visiting his brother, in a house where he was welcome anytime.

“Hey,” Dean answered. He looked around the room, registering boxes and bags and stacks of books that had been shelved before. “Doing a little cataloguing?” he asked.

Sam placed the stack of books he was carrying in a box and straightened up, turning to face Dean. “Um… packing, actually.”

Dean nodded. “Where you headed?”

Sam smiled—a little nervously, Dean thought. “Back to Stanford, if you can believe it.”

“I can believe it,” said Dean. “They’re gonna let you finish?”

“Yeah. I’ll have to do some catch-up classes and get a few more credits. It’ll take a year or more, especially since I’m… thinking of going a different direction.” 

He shifted uncomfortably, and Dean realized Sam was still nervous of what his big brother thought about his life choices. He smiled. “I’m really glad, Sam. What will you do when you finish at Stanford?”

“Well… it depends how I do on my MCATs, but remember Dr. Cara Roberts? I found her online and we’ve exchanged a few e-mails. She’s teaching now, at a little med school out west. I was thinking… you know. A different way of saving people. And there might be things I could do—spells or whatever—that could help people medical science can’t help. If I was careful… maybe I could make a real difference in the world.”

Dean grinned. His heart hadn’t felt so light in years. “My brother, Dr. Sexy.”

“You know it. Do you know that show’s still on the air? It’s in like its 10th season or something crazy like that.”

“I’ll have to catch it sometime.”

“My laptop’s always open.”

Dean stepped forward and embraced his brother. He felt a strange ripple of surprise in Sam, and he realized he had almost never touched him since he became an angel. Maybe he’d been afraid Sam would shove him away, but instead, after a moment, he gripped Dean around the shoulders with such brute strength that a human’s ribs might’ve cracked.

He squeezed and thumped Sam on the back. “I miss you, man.”

“You too.” 

“Call if you need anything. I’m just a prayer away.” 

He winced a little internally, thinking the joke might fall flat, but Sam smiled. “And I’d give you a card, but I think you’ll know where to find me.”

“Sam,” said Dean suddenly. “I’m still your brother. You know that, right? I’ll always be your brother.”

Sam blinked, swallowing. His eyes were wet as they met Dean’s. 

“Yeah, Dean. I know.”

~* * *~

Dean mused, as he folded his wings and his grace and settled onto his favorite pinnacle of the Chicago skyline, that he was becoming a creature of habit. Nahbi had realized it, but she must not have told anyone else, and since he’d fulfilled her wish that he lead in Heaven, she’d respected his need for solitude. He could always be alone here.

Except tonight. There was the barest stirring of the air next to him and he felt Cas before he saw him, a deep thrum in his grace that was repeated in his loins. 

Wordlessly, Cas settled on the ledge beside him, clad in inky, designer black, icily graceful, glorious. Evil or not, Dean often thought that Cas was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Hello, angel,” the new King of Hell said after a moment. “Or should I call you Your Grace?” He smiled coolly at his own pun. “You’ve done all right for yourself, haven’t you?”

Dean gazed at him silently. Revulsion and fear warred with desire and love. Even as Dean struggled to hold his cool, his breath quickened and his blood heated. He had not seen Cas since the night he’d saved him—or damned him—and just looking at him after so long apart was enough to send him over the edge. 

He forced himself to look away and didn’t answer.

Cas sat with him in companionable silence. It felt so right to have him near that Dean didn’t question it. He stopped himself from wondering whether Cas was there to fuck or fight, to bring Dean down or raise him up, to ravage, be ravaged, kill or betray. All were possible, and none of it mattered. 

After several moments of looking out over the city, listening to each other breathe, Cas did what might be the only thing that could have surprised Dean.

He took his hand gently, caressed it, and pressed it to his heart, holding it there while Dean gazed at him in stunned disbelief. After a moment, Cas laughed softly. He raised Dean’s hand and brushed a kiss over his knuckles.

“Well, little angel,” Cas said, and pulled something from his pocket, dangling it before Dean’s eyes. It glinted in the pearl-gray light from the sky; Dean felt a thrill as he recognized the demon-handcuffs. “We’re world leaders now. Don’t you think it’s time we had a summit meeting?”

Dean seized Cas and kissed him hard and deep, crushing him against him. Cas grabbed his head, the cuffs slipping from his fingers and clattering on the ledge, and kissed back just as hard. 

They clung to each other in the thin air on top of the world, all barriers between human, demon, and angel dissolved in the heat of their bodies, good and evil forgotten.

Heaven or hell; it didn’t matter. This was paradise.

~The End~

**Author's Note:**

>  **Notes:** My deepest thanks to both of my betas. The limitless expertise of brightly_lit rescued this fic from an untimely death not once, but twice, and she showed me the direction I needed to take when I was completely lost. majestic_duxk helped tremendously in making sure it all made sense after a zillion re-writes! I couldn’t have done it without them.
> 
> And I cannot say enough about the lovely dahliasheng and her splendid, splendid art. Many, many thanks, dear; you are a ROCK STAR. I couldn’t believe my luck in claiming this prompt, my further good fortune in working with someone so kind and patient, and the crowning glory of even more beautiful art to go with my fic. **Check out her art masterpost here. **
> 
> The title, of course, comes from the Eagles song "Hotel California".


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